Abortion anger will strike elections
Despite the sweeping election wins for women across the country last November, their rights are increasingly under attack in this country.
Most Coloradans watched in horror as Alabama recently passed a draconian law making it illegal for a 12-year old girl to have an abortion even in the case where she is raped by her father. The law goes so far as to punish the doctor who performs an abortion for the 12year old girl with a minimum of 10 years and up to 99 years in prison. Conversely, the father, having committed incest and statutory rape, faces a significantly less severe minimum sentence of one year and a maximum of 20 years.
In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law that bans abortion as soon as physicians can detect a heartbeat. Doctors would be permitted to perform an abortion up to 20 weeks into a pregnancy if the victim has filed an official police report. Similarly, in Missouri, the legislature passed a bill that bans abortions after eight weeks of pregnancy.
While these laws are blatantly unconstitutional, proponents of the Alabama law have admitted that they were passed to directly challenge Roe v. Wade. Social conservatives see an opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade with the appointments of justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. If this isn’t already the case, further conservative appointments to the Court would likely assure this outcome.
With Roe v. Wade in the balance, Colorado will play an
important role in deciding which party controls the U.S. Senate and future appointments to the Supreme Court.
Rather than galvanizing Americans behind a strong economy, conservatives are gambling on a cultural war strategy that will surely backfire in Colorado. This overreach does not bode well for Sen. Cory Gardner who supported the appointments of both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, or the Colorado Republican Party.
Sen. Gardner hasn’t been hurt in the past for his anti-abortion views, but now that the threat to Roe vs. Wade is real, the issue will be front and center.
Indeed, Colorado’s voting history is the best indicator of future behavior. While we wear a few scars from our past (Amendment 2), most often we stand with justice and are on the right side of history, as a national leader protecting and advancing the rights for all Coloradans.
To start, Colorado was the first state in the country to pass the women’s right to vote through a popular referendum in 1893, thereby prohibiting discrimination against women voting. Colorado women achieved the right to vote more than 25 years before women won the right nationally.
In 1894, three Colorado women — Clara Cressingham, Carrie Clyde Holly, and Frances Klock — became the first women to be elected to any legislature in American history when they were elected to the Colorado House .
Today, women make up 45 percent of the overall number of members in the Colorado House of Representatives and Senate. That is the second highest percentage of any legislature in the country.
Here’s another important first: In 1967, Colorado became the first state to loosen restrictions on abortions, six years before Roe vs. Wade.
You need not look any farther than the outcomes of the latest legislative session in Colorado to know that women are still fiercely fighting for equitable, fair and balanced rule of law. We saw female sponsored legislation drive equal pay for equal work, allow local governments to set minimum wages, create a family leave insurance program, and increase retirement savings and make them portable.
Ninety-five percent of eligible citizens are registered to vote in Colorado. Women make up 51 percent of active registered voters. The Colorado Women’s March was one of the largest in the country in both 2017 and 2018, attracting 200,000 people each year.
Colorado women are registered, protesting, voting, running for office and winning, and they are ready for 2020. Like no other election before it, they are poised to influence the presidential election results and have the power to defeat Sen. Gardner who is in the precarious position of holding the most vulnerable Senate seat in the country.
The data and our powerful history do not lie. When women turn out to vote next November, it will be an unfavorable outcome for Republicans, much like 2018.